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Mastiii 4 Review: Vivek Oberoi Aftab Shivdasani and Riteish Deshmukh try hard to revive a legacy, one bad joke at a time
A chaotic return to a tired universe, Mastiii 4 tries to masquerade desperation as comedy, resulting in a cringe-heavy ride powered more by stamina than humour.
Cast: Riteish Deshmukh, Vivek Oberoi, Aftab Shivdasani, Elnaaz Norouzi, Shreya Sharma, Ruhi Singh, Arshad Warsi, Nargis Fakhri
Director: Milap Zaveri
Rating: ★.5
Two decades ago, Masti arrived as a breezy, mildly naughty comedy that relied on timing, chemistry and a certain early-2000s innocence to make its case. Actors Riteish Deshmukh, Vivek Oberoi and Aftab Shivdasani built an entire franchise on that formula, pushing it further with Grand Masti (2013) and Great Grand Masti (2014). The sequels that followed didn’t exactly elevate the genre, but they kept the franchise alive in their own loud, unfiltered way. Now, almost a decade since the last instalment, Mastiii 4 arrives—determined to remind us why nostalgia is not always a reliable marketing strategy.
The storyline is fairly simple: Three married friends in the UK—Amar, Meet and Prem—are trapped in joyless domestic routines and end up borrowing a bizarre idea called a ‘love visa’ from their seemingly perfect friend Kamraj, whose wife grants him a week of annual freedom to do whatever he wants. The trio demands the same from their wives, which triggers a spiral of suspicion, finger-pointing and misunderstandings. The second half turns into a full-blown circus of mistaken affairs, wild confrontations and toilet humour that arrives with absolute confidence and zero self-awareness.
The good
Riteish Deshmukh is the only one who seems genuinely committed to making this universe work again. He plays Amar with a sincerity the screenplay absolutely does not deserve. Aftab Shivdasani has always understood the tone of this franchise, and even when he goes overboard, it feels intentional. Vivek Oberoi, however, crosses the line from exaggerated to exhausting more than once, but he is not the worst thing about this instalment. Among the supporting cast, Tusshar Kapoor’s Don Pablo Putinwa had the potential to deliver the kind of absurdity this franchise thrives on, but it feels like the writing never lets him get there. Genelia Deshmukh’s cameo is a breath of fresh air, mostly because it briefly feels like we’ve stepped into a different, possibly saner movie.
The bad
The jokes, they barely land. And for a film pitched under 'comedy' section, that's not a great start. The writing leans so heavily on crude humour that it forgets to be funny. There’s an unapologetic rehashing of an old one-liner from 2014 film Main Tera Hero, raising genuine concern about how early in the writing process the team ran out of ideas. The toilet-humour stretch in the second half feels like a dare—one the film loses spectacularly. The new male characters add nothing beyond flexed abs and forced eccentricity. The pacing collapses after the interval, and by the time the predictable twist arrives, you’re already mentally all checked out.
The verdict
Mastiii 4 keeps trying to reboot itself with noise, speed and increasingly hollow writing, but only ends up drowning in its own overkill. The jokes collapse faster than the marriages at the centre of the film, the recycled punchlines feel like last-minute panic, and the crude humour overwhelms everything else. By the time the pre-climax arrives—with a sequence so confounding it feels like a collective lapse in judgement—the film fully embraces its identity as a cringe parade that confuses sheer chaos for actual comedy.
